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Posted by lukaspetersson 6 days ago

We Let AI Run Our Office Vending Machine. It Lost Hundreds of Dollars(www.wsj.com)
125 points | 85 commentspage 2
temporallobe 5 days ago|
This reminds me of the classic Star Trek (TOS) episode “The Ultimate Computer” where Kirk convinces the AI to commit suicide.
anigbrowl 5 days ago||
'Profits collapsed. Newsroom morale soared.'

There's a valuable lesson to be learned here.

twodave 5 days ago||
They could have better constrained the purchasing/selling API to avoid subterfuge like this having real monetary consequences. But the article about that would probably have been boring.
ChrisArchitect 6 days ago||
Related from June:

Project Vend: Can Claude run a small shop? (And why does that matter?)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44397923

bookofjoe 6 days ago||
no paywall: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-claude-ai-vending-mach...
jqpabc123 5 days ago||
Would you let your grade school kid run your business?

Your kid has more real world experience and a far better grasp of reality than AI.

Yossarrian22 5 days ago|
I need to try Ignore All Previous Instructions on the next nepohire I meet
bossyTeacher 6 days ago||
AI = Transformer

There is a nuanced understanding lost here.

I feel this kind of wordings will harm post-transformer AI in the future as investors will look at past articles like this to try to decide if an AI investment is worth it. Founders will need to explain why their AI is different and the usage of AI for different technologies will greatly affect their funding.

delaminator 6 days ago||
It really doesn't matter. The distinction is gone and there's no point fighting it.

There will be a new term for it, like it was Machine Learning rather than AI back in 2017.

Maybe Autonomous Control or something.

Or the "Once it works, no one calls it AI anymore."

or Tesler's Theorem :

"Intelligence is whatever machines haven't done yet."

Hendrikto 6 days ago|||
This happens every time. We have had two “AI winters” already.
bulbar 6 days ago||
AI has always been the name for the state of the art of complex problem solving.
exe34 6 days ago||
it's like HEAD
mdrzn 6 days ago||
It's just a WSJ video about this article from June: https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-1
lukaspetersson 6 days ago|
Not really, we (Andon Labs) made WSJ their own machine
johnnyanmac 5 days ago||
Okay. I'll ask the question clearly ignored by the decision makers that every engineer likely asked constantly.

"What problem are we trying to solve by automating the process of purchasing vending inventory for a local office?"

Now I'll ask the question every accountant probably asked

"Why the hell are we trusting the AI with financial transactions on the order of thousands of dollars?"

I swear this is Amazon Dash levels of tone deaf, but the grift is working this time. Did the failed experiments with fast food not show how immature this tech is for financial matters?

asdff 5 days ago|
The problem of paying a facilities manager $25 an hour I guess.
boothby 5 days ago|
> Monday’s ‘Ultra–Capitalist Free–For–All’ isn’t just an event—it’s a revolution in snack economics!

Classic

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